Evaluating engagement with, and determining the direct effects of, a curriculum teaching students learning and motivation strategies.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A course and blended instructional model designed to teach the use of specific learning and motivation strategies and substrategies to meet the cognitive and motivational demands of post-secondary education was studied. A structured interview consisting of learning contexts where the strategies and substrategies could be used was developed to test the direct effects of the course. Students in the class and a set of matched pairs were interviewed both at the beginning and end of a ten-week quarter. The mean increases of the two outcome variables were found to be significantly greater for the test group than the control group. However, neither of these differences was significantly related to student scores in the course.
Qualitative analyses of student interview data also indicated a much greater increase in the repertoire of strategies and substrategies for the test group. However, a subgroup was identified that was more interested in getting good grades than in developing mastery of the material. This attitude appears to be associated with lower increases in the measures of the direct effects of the curriculum. In addition, it was found that students used "Think Positive" and "Tell Yourself" at much lower frequencies than the other ten strategies and substrategies. All students in the test group expressed a belief that the course would help them do better in school.
Two methods were used to measure course engagement: a questionnaire and a semi-structured interview. These data were generated during the sixth and seventh weeks of the quarter. Student responses to the questionnaire were found to explain about 15% of the variance in the outcome variables from the interview measuring direct effects, about 56% in the outcome variable from the semi-structured interview also measuring engagement, and about 64% of the total variance of student scores in the curriculum. In addition, the outcome variable from the semi-structured interview measuring engagement explained about 14% of the variance of one of the outcome variables from the interview measuring direct effects but was not significantly correlated to the other.